Robert Charrette - Find your own truth

By the time they'd worked out their plan, Neko was impressed. Perhaps making this run with a partner would not be so bad after all. If she could do what she said, he might learn something.

Sam sang and watched. The shamans sang, too. The dancers sang as they danced. Feet pounded in unison, beating a rising tempo for the song. The dry ground beneath the dancers' feet began to puff up in dust clouds as feet bare, booted, and moccasined stamped and dragged across it.

Earth was beginning to stir.

Urdli scanned the African landscape around them. This had been a pleasant land once, a savannah. It had been dry much of the time, but that was not bad. Many places were dry. Life had found a way here, once. Now the place was parched and barren. Life did not find it so easy now.

Estios walked at his side. Laverty's aide's skin was already dark, but he still sweated too much. He needed constant reminders to drink enough water.

"Why us?" he complained. "I'd rather be on one of the strike teams."

Urdli scanned the sky. He preferred not to be drawn into that conversation.

Estios persisted. "Why did we draw this location? Why here, Urdli?"

"We are here because someone must be here. I am an obvious choice, given my abilities." The rock and sand reminded him of his home. The animals, the few that they saw, were different, but mat didn't matter. Rock was rock, and animals but ephemeral. Even allegedly intelligent beings such as Estios were ephemeral. "As to you? I do not know why you are here. I will not need your aid in mis quest. Given your mutual animosity, perhaps the Dog shaman merely wished you discomfort."

"More likely he thinks I'll get killed along the way," Estios said darkly.

Urdli shook his head. "If I had thought this were a dangerous retrieval, I would have insisted that we bring soldiers with us. Laverty would have required such precautions as well. There is no reason to expect problems."

"Unless Spider beats us to it." "Perhaps men there might be a few problems," Urdli conceded. "You might even see the combat you wish for. But you are a certified mage, and I am a magician of no small skill. It would take significant opposition to thwart us. I do not think that Spider will have the time to mobilize such resources, especially for just a single device. Her efforts will be directed elsewhere."

"And you are content to let others handle the difficult runs. To rely on Verner."

"I am content at the moment to walk. Matters will proceed safely enough without us, for the time being. Haven't you felt the flow of the astral? Spider has not yet manifested enough to be a magical threat. She still works through earthly agents, and such agents have yet to prove as competent as I feared. Verner's efforts will, at worst, weaken them. For now, secrecy even at the cost of relying on Verner and his friends and swiftness are our allies."

Estios held his hands up to the light and studied them critically. "We won't be a secret if we run into anyone. Why can't we start on the earth path you talked about?"

"It is not yet time." Urdli was not about to let Estios know of his limitations. "We can safely walk this land. To those we meet, if any, we will be two travelers, nothing more. The melanin bloom will peak shortly, and as long as you wear the tinted lenses you will not look out of place. The language spells will work as they always have. Only by carelessness will we appear strangers. There is nothing to fear. We shall be in and out before anyone else completes their portion of this elaborate arrangement, even your friends on the strike teams." And that, of course, was why Urdli found it easy to take such a demeaning part in this effort to control the weapons. Here he would have the upper hand, away from interference. Verner's runners might succeed in their raids, but more likely not. Laverty's soldiers had higher chances, but they would follow the professor's orders to the letter. While the activity might alert Spider's earthly agents, Urdli thought the probability low. From the pooling of data, he had seen that Spider's plans were less advanced than he had feared. Naturally, he had not shared that observation with the others; he saw no reason to let them know they wouldn't be facing active opposition in most of the locations. "You seem amused," Estios commented. "Perhaps I am. I had thought the Dog shaman would demand that I take a more difficult part in his plan,. face a threat that might be a danger to me. He holds me in less regard than he does yourself. A careful assignment of goals would have let him make the elimination of an enemy seem a mere twist of fate."

"Yet he gave us the milk run. He specifically sent us out after the one weapon unlikely to have any guard other than its location. We'll face no opposition beyond the ordinary dangers of travel in this sub-Saharan blight."

"Exactly. The dangers of travel are not really dangers to magicians of our caliber. And will be free to act on our own after we have done what is necessary here."

"So he had underestimated you." Estios smiled. "I see why you're amused."

Urdli smiled back. Verner was not the only one. "I thought you would.''

The elder shamans rose and formed a circle around Sam and the sprouting tree. The larger circle of the dancers stamped and swayed around them. Howling Coyote nodded to Sam, and Sam began to sing faster. The shamans echoed his new cadence as they joined hands. Howling Coyote lifted his left foot and plunged it down and forward. The inner ring began to dance, turning within the greater circle in a tighter focus of power.

The preliminaries were drawing to a close.

Janice looked down the hill at the small group of people gathered there. Four norms and three orks. All, save Ghost, were strangers. She knew their names and some of their general abilities because Ghost had told her, but that made them no less strangers. She wondered if they could be trusted.

She wondered if she could be trusted.

For more than a week now, the only norm she had seen was Ghost. She had fought back the hunger because he was a follower of Wolf, and in some obscure way she didn't fully understand, a member of her pack. She had come to recognize his strong spirit during their companionship in the wilderness. As much as a norm could be a friend to one of her kind, he was one. Of course, he was also cyber-enhanced, a deadly shot, and a vicious fighter who might have a chance at injuring her seriously, but she didn't think that was the real reason she had not made a meal of him. She prayed it wasn't.

These others were different. Norm or ork, they were not part of the pack. All were experienced shadow-runners and therefore theoretically dangerous. But if one were to straggle behind, and let attention wane, then she might…

Might what?

Her stomach growled an answer. She turned away and snatched up Ghost's last offering. Her fangs sank deeply into the deer haunch, but the juices that flowed did little to quiet the insistence of her need. She spat the tasteless meat onto the ground.

She didn't know how much longer she could hold off the hunger. Here, in this land so alive with life and so near to concentrations of people, it got harder every day. Distress warred with longing when she gazed across the sound to the lights of Seattle. The feelings were only amplified by the nearness of the people below. Why was she so disturbed? Dan Shiroi had shown no discomfort at what he was. He had taught her that the hateful norms were proper prey for her kind, rabbits to their wolves. And she was just like him, wasn't she? Something inside her shouted no, its voice barely overcoming the joyous shouting that fired her blood at the thought of meat. Sam had said that after this one run he could do the magic that would transform her back to a norm. Could she believe? Did she dare hope? Did she want to?